Did you know the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Board (CCJPB) are installing electronic BikeLink lockers at “most” of their stations right now?
The Capitol Corridor is the Amtrak California rail service between Sacramento and San Jose, via the East Bay, with 11 daily round trip trains serving 1.7 million riders annually.
Apparently, stations outside of the Bay Area should have these elockers available for use right about now (Can anyone confirm?), and Bay Area Stations should have them by the end of summer.
Robert Prinz of Bike East Bay turned me onto this news after I posted about my elocker wish for Diridon Station yesterday. He tells me Diridon is included in the list of stations receiving these secure bike storage lockers. Prinz also says the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) has grant funding available for more BikeLink lockers, so I encourage you as a bike advocate to bug your public agencies and get the ball rolling on this.
The agenda for the CCJPB June meeting includes this work progress status report.
Capitol Corridor Station Bicycle eLocker Project. Pursuant to CCJPA Resolution 15-08, staff is proceeding with allocated grant funds to install eLockers for bicycles at most all the CCJPA stations. The eLocker project is being coordinated with Amtrak for liability and insurance purposes that are required prior to installation. The CCJPA anticipates eLockers being installed the summer of 2015. Residual grant funds will be used for the folding bicycle rental project and will be the focus of development during 2015 and implementation during 2016.
Since Diridon Station will soon be taken care of, I nominate downtown San Jose for a publicly accessible BikeLink locker.
nice… i was just asking VTA about the non e-lockers at the great america station… they didn’t seem to know about this….
Richard – Elockers are coming to San Jose City Hall. Some will be publicly accessible.
The BikeLink locker location map (http://www.bikelink.org/map) is updated pretty quickly once new spots are installed, so I don’t think any of the new Amtrak station lockers have been rolled out quite yet. Here in the East Bay we did get some new lockers already this year in Alameda and at UC Berkeley, and updates were posted to the BikeLink Facebook page at that time (https://www.facebook.com/BikeLink.org) so stay tuned!
On a side note, Bike East Bay is signing people up for free BikeLink starter cards via BART station outreach for now through at least the end of August. Find the dates, times, and locations online at https://bikeeastbay.org/bartbiketheft.
Hi Richard, my name is Shirley, and I’m a Planner at Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA). I have some updated information about the Capitol Corridor station eLockers project that you may find helpful.
At this time, there are no plans to install BikeLink eLockers at the San Jose Diridon station with this round of funding. All of the Capitol Corridor stations are planned to have BikeLink eLockers except those shared with BART and Caltrain (Richmond, Oakland Coliseum, Santa Clara/Great America, Santa Clara/University, and San Jose) and those that opt out (Rocklin). CCJPA staff will work with Caltrain to evaluate the possibility of implementing BikeLink eLockers at the shared stations.
There are already three Capitol Corridor stations that have existing BikeLink eLockers, and those are Suisun/Fairfield, Berkeley, and Fremont.
The timeline of new eLocker installation has been changed from our initial estimation of summer 2015 due to unforeseen challenges; however, we hope to have the eLockers at the stations by the end of 2015.
Please feel free to contact me at my email if you have additional questions. Thanks!
Thanks for the update Shirley. We were told initially that 13 of the 17 Capitol Corridor stations were getting lockers via this project, but now it sounds like that number is now down to just 8 stations. Was there any public process regarding the Rocklin station opting out, as I’m sure there are a number of bike/train commuters (and occasional visitors like myself) who would have loved to see them installed there?
It is also disappointing to hear that the shared Caltrain/Capitol Corridor stations are not getting lockers through this project, as they do not currently have them unlike the shared BART/Capitol Corridor stations. If there is anything we can do to help support a future installation please let me know, as the need is definitely there and bike theft issues are only getting worse.
When we reached out to City of Rocklin staff about the eLockers project, they felt that there is no current need for eLockers at the train station because there are very few passengers who bike at the Rocklin train station. There was unlikely any public process involved in this decision; however, I am not certain. CCJPA is still ready to install eLockers at Rocklin if the City decides to opt in again.
Yes, we would certainly like to see eLockers at the shared Caltrain/Capitol Corridor stations as well. Perhaps some advocacy from bicycle coalitions to Caltrain about this issue will encourage staff to put this on their priority list. Applying to the BAAQMD eLockers grant is certainly something that they can do at this time.
I would like to edit my original comment: Santa Clara/Great America is one of the stations that are planned to get new BikeLink eLockers. It is not a shared station with Caltrain.
I apologize for the mistake!
Shirley, I really appreciate the detailed update on this. I forwarded your suggestion regarding Caltrain stations to the local advocacy people.
if i lose this card the value is lost and no refund 🙂
That’s correct.